Fatalistic
by Andrea Foxx
Summary: Soren knows death, and he has known death for a long, painful time.


Fatalistic

--

Amazingly, the defense was holding.

Of course it was. Soren had organized it himself. The layout of the broken courtyard was advantageous in that the exits were narrow and treacherous. One man himself could fill up the path, and no matter the how large the horde marching on them could have been, it was reduced to facing them in single-file. Ir was a standard defense: workable even with the spare numbers they had. Ike and Oscar had done a fine job holding the west entrance together. Titania held the east almost single-handedly. Boyd and the new recruit Mia alternated holding the south, and any that slipped through Soren himself personally dispatched. And all the while poor Rhys darted about with that worried look in his eyes, and for a moment Soren could have sworn the unfortunate medic had four hands.

That was not what amazed him. He said little about it, but he could see it in their eyes, the creeping thing that crippled them all. The three empty bedrolls in the ruined hall. It was why, he knew, they had not won already. With his strength, this fear for their lives never would have held. It was true they missed the power of two of their most formidable men. But the loss of the third wound like a woodworm through Soren's mind, as he saw it wind through every single grating blow they took against this advancing foe.

The Commander was dead.

No, not dead. The Commander was Ike.

Greil was dead.

That was not what amazed him either. All men had an end. None of them was immortal. A single well-placed blow, and that was the end of that. Any of them could fall, at any time. It was his purpose, knew Soren, to make that event as unlikely as possible.

He did not know for how much longer his art would be effective, however. There was only so much he could do when the individual hearts of his players were so _weak_. They had thought he had not seen, or not cared. Titania hurt. The three brothers held fast to each other, as if they would be swept away. Even Mia, who had never known Greil's hand for very long, was solemn.

Ike had known Gatrie had left. He had seen Shinon abandon them, though he said nothing of it. And while their new commander hid it well it was an insult to him, and in every cleave of his breaking sword Soren could see the frustration.

That was what amazed him. They stood fast, even after the loss of something so vital to them. Ike did all he could. But he was no Greil, and it was a wonder that tenuous possibility that his father could blossom out of him, that the shadow of the man could have been left behind in the boy, could hold them for so long.

For one well-placed strike was all it took to end any of them, and that was a harsh reality to fight.

Such was the truth of Greil, who lay to sleep on the mountain, never again to rise. Soren had visited the grave as all of the company had. He had meant to speak his mind, to give whatever thanks or prayer he was expected to give, and some he had never let himself betray before. But the words stuck in his throat: gone unspoken not because he knew not what to say, but because he simply could not have said it. Not if he prepared a thousand years. Not if Tellius was about to fall dead around him. Before that grave, he was as mute as the day he was born.

There it was, all over again. He had known death before, known what it was to look at a cold body and know it would never speak or move again. The man that had taught him to think and to kill had perished. Now the man who had taught him to speak and to _belong_ had parted ways, never to return.

And he was left to remain, mute in the dark. As always, as it was the way of the world.

It was never to last long, however. For as soon as every death was past, it would be tossed aside for the new. Soren was not sure what Ike was to teach him, but regardless of it all he was destined to die someday, perhaps even that day, at any time, really...

And Soren knew that he would be there, at the end of it all. And when that end came, by his death or by some others', he would never be able to speak on it.

His mind snapped back to the reality of the situation as Boyd's angry yell betrayed the riders had broken through. Although relatively unhurt, poor Boyd could not have hoped to stay them for long when they finally managed the strategy to simply charge over him. Mia took one of them, but was forced to duck away under a flying lance. Ike turned, yelled, began to retreat to the hold, but could not for the axes clawing for his neck.

Soren looked to the black entrance to their ruined hold, and knew who hid there. In his mind's eye, he could see stillness, imagine the silence of children emerging, only to find their brothers and masters cold and dead. He could not imagine they would be able to speak then, either.

And so he stood forth, between them and despair, all of his bodily frailty that he knew was doomed to persist. And as the riders circled a black, fatalistic rage as he never had held before crept upon the back of his mind.

Let them come, he thought. We all will meet our end someday. I will not let them know the ends I have seen.

And if this is my own end, let it be such an end.

The baneful magic gathered at Soren's fingertips and no others soldier of Daien ever knew death as those few did that day.


End file.
